According to Home Media Research compiled by the Redhill Group, it appears that Blu-ray sales are actually quite solid for the year, and up 300 percent year-on-year from 2007. The research says that Blu-ray movies are selling at about 1.14 million per month on average for the year, for a total of about 8 million. The combined total for 2006 and 2007 was about 6 million discs sold. The latest numbers completely contradict ABIresearch's recent projections that Blu-ray was seeing a "lukewarm response" from consumers and that the PS3 was the "only bright spot" for the format.

ABI's survey was conducted in April, a month after Toshiba decided to stop production of rival HD DVD and it seems that sales have skyrocketed since then with only one format on the market. Andy Parsons, Senior Vice President, Product Planning, Pioneer Home Entertainment Group & U.S. Chairman, Blu-ray Disc Association Promotions Committee, added strong reasoning as to why the ABIresearch study was not trust worthy, outdated and flat out wrong. “ABI Research’s data appears to have been collected just after Q1 2008 when demand for Blu-ray was very high and supplies were low. With the abrupt end of the format war in February, hardware manufacturers and retailers were faced with a sudden, unexpected pent-up demand for players -- a phenomenon that was confirmed by retailers in subsequent press reports.

"Because hardware production schedules are arranged many months in advance, most player manufacturers needed a fair amount of time to respond to the increased demand. My own company (Pioneer) is still working to fill backorders for example. “Another factor that must be considered is where we are in the adoption curve for Blu-ray. New publishing formats typically require several years before they can begin to establish themselves in the mass market. For comparison purposes, I looked back at some old DVD industry newsletters from the end of 1998 -- roughly the same early point in DVD's life that we're at now with Blu-ray -- and found a couple of analyst quotes that seem short-sighted in retrospect. One predicted a 'long and healthy life ahead for VHS.' Another was quoted as saying that DVD hardware sales were 'slow to take off, partly due to consumer confusion." If Internet polls had existed ten years ago, I'm certain that similarly low consumer interest levels would have been detected for DVD, even though it obviously became a highly successful format.

"Bottom line: no one should be too eager to make declarations about Blu-ray Disc's progress in the market now, because it's just too soon after launch."

Deja vu this week, as once again Blu-ray sales are down. Sure, it's only another ten percent, but we realized how big of a deal this was when we went back through every Nielsen VideoScan post, courtesy of Home Media Magazine, and couldn't find another week with revenues that low -- that data has only been reported since April. While last week there was some debate as to weather Blu-ray was slacking, or the fact that it was simply a weak slew of releases to blame, but this week there is no doubt, as DVD took a bigger hit than Blu-ray. We expect much of the same for the foreseeable future though, as we are right in the middle of TV series release season and it'll be at least a few weeks before the studios start to release all of the titles that should sell well this holiday season.

As expected, not much going on this week as everyone in the home media business is waiting on the holiday season to release the hounds. Sure, both DVD and Blu-ray volumes are up this week, but both are still relatively low because Street Kings -- and other titles this week -- just weren't that interesting to consumers. The number one titles on Blu-ray this week was easily Street Kings, out selling any other titles two to one, but overall that title wasn't very popular with Blu-ray as less than ten percent of those who bought a disc containing the movie last week bought it on Blu. And who says parents don't buy their kids Blu-ray discs, as the latest Hannah Montana movie takes fourth overall on the Blu-ray charts -- but at the same time only managing to steal four percent away from DVD. Looking forward once again shows much of the same for next week, as we continue to wait for all the studios to ramp up for the holiday season.

Wow, are we bad at making predictions of what the Nielsen VideoScan charts -- courtesy of Home Media Magazine -- are going to do. We thought we were going to see another ho-hum week like the last few, and then Batman went and made us fall out of our chair by single handily giving Blu-ray the best week it's ever had in the four months we've been tracking the market share. Another first this week is something that Hollywood expects to see more often -- but is too early to call a trend -- is the fact that while DVD sales are down for the week, Blu-ray is up. Now we realize right up front that a big part of the reason for this is because Batman Begins has been out on DVD for, forever, and was just released for Blu-ray this week. But you can take a look at Batman: Gotham Knight and see that head to head, the new release netted the same result as the overall share at 12 percent. This can only be a good sign for Blu-ray in regards to the future of packaged media, but again we'll remind everyone that 7 of the top 20 titles on DVD are not available on Blu-ray. Looking forward, most of the new releases should be available on Blu in the coming months, so we'd be very surprised if Blu-ray couldn't keep up this pace going into the holiday season where it really looks like it'll have the opportunity to take off.

I did my part by buying batman begins & the new Rambo as well as master & commander & the Mission impossible trilogy that was on sale at Amazon.

I don't know about everyone else but give me the movies I want & I'll buy them, price the back catalog right & I'll get them too!

All good points!!!! One more reason (a few of my technically oriented friends including a TV station engineer agree with me heer) is that some of the Blu-Ray discs look like crap (as also noticed is some major mags.)! I've seen a few that I rented from Blockbuster hoping to see a vast improvement over my regular DVD (upconverted) and boy..what junk! No diff.! Horrible blacks; sunburned looking skintones, etc,. etc.,! Almost afraid to upgrade my current disc library? Thank goddness for some if the better reviews on Amazon.Com!!